Content marketing, as defined by the Content Marketing Institute, is “… a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action”.
But there isn’t one way to define Content Marketing. Some define it as high-quality storytelling and content, others talk about how content marketing is less disruptive than other more traditional forms of marketing. No matter what you hear about content marketing, it is important to pay attention to what is factual and what is not about this wildly effective marketing approach. Here are X content marketing myths, debunked.
- The Website Is the Best Place for Content: Publish your content on various platforms. Although your website is a very valuable platform to have, it should not be the only content destination. The more platforms and channels you publish on, the wider your audience reach.
- Content Marketing and Automation Go Hand in Hand: You may know what kind of content works for your brand or business, but high quality content creation is not made automatically. You will have to work to produce accessible, understandable, and meaningful content uniquely crafted for your target demographic.
- Content Marketing Isn’t Measurable: But, of course it is! Each channel or platform has its own metrics. But will let you track page views, the average time a user spends on a page, shares, comments, likes, and more.
- You Should Be the One Handling Content Creation: Having total in-house content creation is an appealing idea. But it does not have to be your reality. When you outsource content creation, you can “leverage the talents and experience of professional writers who know how to create valuable content”. You won’t be alone in doing this — did you know half of B2B marketers surveyed by the Content Marketing Institute say they have outsourced at least part of their content marketing? Even further, 84% of those surveyed have outsourced content creation!
- Not Every Niche Can Use It: On the contrary, content marketing can work for any type of niche. You may have seen content produced for some niches more than others, but the reality is, you can always create relevant and valuable work for today’s content-hungry audience.